The need for mineral resources is increasing with the increasing population and the development especially in the large economies as India, China and Brazil. There is a large focus on discovering new mineral deposits and enhancing the exploitation of those that have already been discovered. New and/or improved extraction method can be essential in supplying the demand for the mineral resources. Processing the mineral resource not only exploiting it enhances the economic value of the mineral resource with as much as an order of magnitude or more. The presence of other natural resources in the proximity of the mineral resources as well as the geographic location can be of importance for instance for the feasibility of exploitation. As such it can be an advantage having natural gas locally available and mineral resources in proximity to the coast as it is the case in Northern Norway.
In the recent years a lot of development in different types of leaching techniques has taken place (acid leach, alkaline leaching, hydro-bio leaching etc.). Most of this research has focused on sulfides and oxides for metal extraction. There has also been a lot of research taking place on CO2-mineral sequestration, which is also enhancing the understanding of mineral leaching.
Silicate minerals show a very large range of reaction rates, where olivine is one of the most reactive silicate minerals. The reaction rate of olivine is quite high, however, a common obstacle is that secondary minerals form on the surface of the olivine and inhibits a continuation of high reaction rate and to maintain high reaction rate high pressure and temperature is implied.